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Wednesday, February 7, 2018

The Wonderful of Birds Migration

Canadian geese on its flight to migrate to safer breeding places - photo: M. Horath

Some birds flying thousands of miles a year
migrating between two places across the continent to find suitable places to
breed, feed and rising their chicks. Migration happens in so many ways from
short distance, medium distance, long distance or some of the birds will stay at
the same place throughout the year.

Studies of birds’ migration had been improved
with the advancement of technologies available today. Even though today the
studies can be conducted properly with satellites tracking devices, the birds’
populations are getting decreases as their natural stopover areas had been used
for development by human. Other threats also caused by plastics pollution that
killed many birds and also their main sources of foods.

With the proper studies, action can be taken in
order to identify the important areas for migratory birds can be protected in
order to help them to complete their journey. Most of these areas are wetlands
and coastal areas that become their main feeding grounds during their journey
across the globe.

Birds migrate in order to make sure the
availability of the food resources. While during the mating seasons they also
need to make sure that the areas they select is safe to raise their young.
Many migratory birds migrate in large groups, while the short range migratory
birds might migrate in smaller numbers. Since these patterns of migration had
been going on for long period of times, the ecosystem in both migratory areas
are suitable to support their needs.

Among the long-distance migration, Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea) known to be the
longest migrator by flying from Arctic breeding grounds and the Antarctic each
year. Other long-distance migrators include short-tailed shearwater (Puffinus tenuirostris), ruff (Philomachus puganx), northern wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe), Amur falcon (Falco amurensis) and many other birds
that migrates in order to find better places with plenty of foods.

Even though harnessing plenty of food resources
in the areas where they stays, migratory birds also will enrich it with their faeces
to increase the blooming of algae and fertilized the areas to make it suitable
for other life to grows by the time they return the following year. This is why
the migrating process keep on continuing for long period of times – until we
change the environment.

The same thing with medium-distance and
short-distance migrators. They also balancing the amount of their food
resources. Spreading the seeds, improve the soils, increase the drainage (when
they scratching the ground to find food), controlling pest and many other
things that birds do.

Equipped with wings, birds are the animals that
can travels further in order to shapes the world compared with fish that can
only travel to areas covered with water (and either they are salt-water fish or
fresh-water fish). For millions of years birds the only travellers that can go
from end to end of the world in order to balance their ecosystem.

Birds’ migrations are one of the best things to
observe in nature. From there, there are many things interconnected together
with other lives wherever they stop. As the time goes by, everything will keep
on flourishing until they come again the following year.